Piombino, another three months to indicate the final offshore location

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The Golar Tundra regasifier ship – purchased by Snam on the recommendation of the Draghi government to deal with Italy’s energy emergency following the cut in gas supplies by Russia – arrived in the port of Piombino on the evening of Sunday 19 March. Towed by four tugboats, the 293-metre long and 47-metre wide ship entered the port of the Tuscan town around 11 pm (half an hour after the departure of the last ferry to Elba, which took place at 10.30 pm), and was docked at east quay of the north dock.

There, according to the provisions of the authorization signed by the extraordinary commissioner for the regasification terminal Eugenio Giani, president of the Region, it will remain moored for three years, after which it will have to be moved to an offshore location, in the middle of the sea. However, this definitive destination, which Snam has undertaken to indicate, has not yet been identified, so much so that Giani with a commissioner’s order dated 17 March last granted a further extension to the leading gas transport and storage company: the project to relocate offshore can be presented by 26 June 2023, and no longer by 24 March (as envisaged by virtue of the 100-day extension granted in December 2022).

This second extension was requested by Snam on 15 March last “given that further design solutions are being studied – says the company – for a different off-shore location of the regasification terminal, the possible construction of which must, however, also be verified with reference to the correlated technical implications that require necessary and complex insights for an assessment of the feasibility of the solutions themselves”.

The uncertainty about the definitive location of the Golar Tundra adds to the uncertainty about the compensations that President Giani has promised to Piombino and the Val di Cornia (but which the Government has not yet granted or defined), including discounts on gas bills , reclamation of the steel plant area, renewable energy plants: «Italy must say thanks to Piombino and Tuscany», underlined Giani just yesterday, who arrived in Piombino to see the arrival of the regasification ship.

It will take a few more weeks to start up the regasification business. The construction works of the pipeline (only) 8.8 kilometers long, which will connect the ship to the national gas network, are in the final stage: the proximity to the pipeline is one of the reasons that guided the Government’s choice of Piombino (together with the draft of the seabed and with the length of the quay). About 400 people are currently working on the site. In the first half of April it is expected that the pipeline will be coupled to the ship, while in the second half of the month the hydraulic tests will be carried out in preparation for entry into operation.